"You might be planting bad behavior to your kids while they're still babies"
Are we puzzled why our children fight us back or bullies in school, when we knew we never told them to fight back; in the contrary, we always tell them to forgive? Well, never told them those words but we might be unaware we gave them examples on how to react on such situations – when they were very young and naïve.
One of the oldest ways to pacify crying babies when they slipped and fell on the floor, hit their head on something is hitting back at the object, like the chair, the floor or anything that they hurt themselves or a sibling, playmates, and even a parent who made them cry.
This kind of pacifying kid’s feeling is very wrong as is proven by my little girl. My mother-in-law use the method to pacify the feeling of my girl to stopped her crying whenever she hurt herself from falling on the floor, or hitting her knee or head on a chair, or a sibling that caused her to cry.
I am aware about the bad effect of this technique so I warned my wife and my older three kids to never pretend hitting back on the floor, chairs, or anyone of them whenever she was hurt by them or hurt herself on objects. This rule was an old one I made since the birth of my first child; however, it was forgotten after 12 years of not having another kid. It’s not that I am smart, but I learned it from my parents.
However, I hadn’t spoken to my mother-in-law about it. And I was shocked to see how my little girl, Iriz Kate, reacted whenever she hurt herself or when she was hurt by her older sister, and two brothers. One of her reactions I recorded it using my cellphone.
One time while she was playing, she accidentally slipped on the floor and hurt her knee, so, she cried. I tried to stop her and pacified her. I noticed she was signaling me to hit back on the floor by pointing at it, but I told her “No.” She sat down on the chair and continued crying. Then she started kicking the chair and hitting it with her hands, and talking like the way her grandmother talks whenever she pretended hitting back on the objects that hurt my little girl.
Young and naive they are, it’s the time they learn behaviors and attitudes that they will carry with them throughout their lives. From being conceive till they are kids are the times of their being sponge-like character wherein they absorb everything they see and hear from us.
We as adults think what we are doing or showing don’t affect them are unaware we are inculcating into their mind and bones teachings they will not have an easy time to change once they are already grown up.
The good thing is while they are young it can still be changed especially when they are yet still considered babies, like, my kid who now forgot the thought doing revenge whenever she is hurt by an object or by her playmates. She now understands that it is normal to get hurt when one does not be careful, and it is part of socialization to be accidentally hurt by a playmate.
The bad part is when they are already in their teenage years. This is a little too late to correct the bad behaviors and attitudes they learned from us because it makes them confused. And when they rebel or we can no longer influence them like when they were yet babies, we tend to blame the environment and try to absolve ourselves from the responsibility especially when we can no longer take things in control.
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